We are wonderful enough to be God's Advent IV

+Nothing is too wonderful to be true.
Nothing is so holy it’s unreachable.
And nothing is as sacred and wondrous to God as we are.
But that fact, that we are wonderful in God’s eyes, can be very difficult for us to believe and to accept. Mary, the Mother of Jesus, the Handmaiden of the Lord, the Favored One can teach us a lot about graceful acceptance of the incomprehensible Love God has for us.
 Mary was the first disciple and she serves as the opening salvo of the incarnation that is the Christmas miracle.
She said yes, she walked with faith, she journeyed in trust and, even though she had nary a clue what was going to happen, she responded to God’s beckoning. She was open to God’s in-breaking into our life, our world, our human condition. That’s what God asks of each of us. And Mary was the first to say, “yes.”
Mary was a young girl who had no remarkable pedigree, no history of exhibiting outrageous faith and who was from an ordinary family.
So, why did God choose her?
Because she was ordinary, and ordinary humans—people like you and me, people like Mary and Joseph---are absolutely adored by God.
This is the true miracle, the true wonder of the story of Jesus’ birth: it happened to regular people.
Regular people were chosen to bear and raise God in the Flesh.
Regular people who responded with amazing, astounding and outlandish grace, but were regular people nonetheless.
I suppose we could say that God knew Mary would say yes.
I suppose we could say that God knew Joseph wouldn’t throw Mary to the curb when he found out about the pregnancy.
I suppose we could say that God had this whole thing planned out, like some type of masterful puppeteer, but there’s no evidence to suggest this to be true.
Rather there is a preponderance of evidence to suggest that God approaches us and asks us---all the time---to be the bearers of God’s wondrous light to the entire world and that, those of us who say “yes” are in for the ride of our lives.
Noah, Abraham and Sarah, Moses, Aaron and Miriam, David and Nathan, Ruth and Naomi---these are not people of extraordinary moral character or tremendous faith when God reaches out to them. As a matter of fact, most of them tried their darndest to, at best, ignore and, at worst, reject God’s overtures. But, regardless of their hesitancy, each and every one of them ended up being servants of God, bearers of Good News, prophetic witnesses to the inching forward of creation toward the perfection and unity of all things longed for by God, promised by the prophets and realized, in part, by the First Advent….to be realized, in full, on the occasion of the Second.
God doesn’t choose us for who we are at our worst moments, God chooses us for who we can be.  And God knows that we all---all of us---can be something amazing. Something wonderful. Something prophetic. Because God knows we are—each and every one of us—someONE amazing, someONE wonderful, SomeONE prophetic.
We just need to find our voice, our faith, our trust.
And then we need to
use our voice,
exercise our faith
and exert our trust.
We can learn how to do this, by considering Mary.
Mary asks Gabriel, “How Can this Be?”
Gabriel replies, it can be because you, like all of humanity, is favored by, loved by and longed for by God. And nothing—“NOTHING is impossible with God.”
Mary, HEARING that nothing is impossible with God, BELIEVING that nothing is impossible with God, TRUSTING that nothing is impossible with God simply responds with:
“Here I am Lord. Let it Be according to Your Word.”
She didn’t do a cost benefit analysis. She didn’t consult her business manager or her therapist or her life coach.
She simply said, Here I am Lord. Your servant. Let it Be.
Mary wasn’t some sacred prophet of old, re-birthed to do God’s work in the world; she was an ordinary young girl presented with a wonderful gift: God’s favor.
Mary wasn’t any holier than you and me. But, perhaps because of her age, perhaps because she was from a small country town, perhaps because she was so in awe of having an angel visit, or maybe just because she was receptive to wonder, Mary stepped aside and let the Love of God take her over, making her an extraordinary instrument of God.
Although Mary wasn’t any holier than you and me,  she sure was brave.
Not because she had a child before marriage. Not because she stood by Jesus all the days of his life, not even because she said yes. No Mary was brave because she trusted. She had faith and she truly believed that NOTHING was too wonderful, too outrageous, too incomprehensible to be true… even the fact that God can and that God does love each and every one of us enough to name us God’s Favored One.
We’re regular folks who’ve been graced with God’s Favor.
And my Advent wish for each and every one of us is that we accept this favor and learn, by taking baby steps, to trust this Favor and to live into it through Faith, accepting that the Love of God isn’t too wonderful to be True, but it is too wonderful to be ignored.
 It’s too wonderful to be tossed aside.
It’s too wonderful to be denied.
Mary’s soul proclaims the greatness of the Lord. Her spirit rejoices in God her Savior and her wonder is sacred, her trust holy and her example for us?
Priceless.
Nothing is too wonderful to be true, and nothing is too holy to be unreachable and nothing---nobody---is beyond God’s loving embrace.
For we are wonderful enough to be God’s.
Amen.+

Advent 3 Mission Possible

+Remember the old television program, Mission: Impossible? At the beginning of the show, that week’s mission would be outlined for the agents by a disembodied voice coming from a reel to reel tape recorder. Before the closing words, “This tape will self-destruct in 5 secondsl” came the equally iconic phrase: “Your mission, if you choose to accept it is:” In Advent, our mission, if we choose to accept it, is to let the seeds of hope promised by the prophets of the Hebrew Scriptures, pronounced by John the Baptist and incarnated in the person of Jesus Christ to germinate within us, growing to great heights.
You see as we wind into the last two weeks of Advent, it’s time for us to wake up and see the light. It’s time for us to accept our mission: preparing the soil of our souls, allowing the  seed of God’s word to take hold within us putting down deep and strong roots of faith.
Last Saturday, Bishop Bill held an Advent retreat for all the priests of the diocese. Our morning speaker was the Bishop of Rochester, Prince Singh. Bishop Singh made an excellent presentation and one of his statements has stayed with me all week.

He said:
“Advent is a time when we remember and celebrate the first Advent, the incarnation of Christ through Jesus’ birth. Advent is also a time when we anticipate Christ’s second coming, the second Advent, if you will, when Christ comes in glory to unite this world and the next in apocalyptic drama.”
Bishop Singh then said, and this is what has stuck with me all week: “well, that covers the past and the future, but what about now? What does Advent have to tell us about the present time?
Where can we find the Christ in today?”
The answer, of course, is right here. Christ is in the world today through us. We are the Body of Christ. In the present, in the today, in the here and now. We’re it.
And while we’ve spent a lot of time this Advent talking about preparing ourselves for the in-breaking of God-in-the-flesh right here on earth, I’m not sure we’re all aware of just what that means. God’s breaking into the here and now goes much more smoothly, if we welcome God’s presence in our lives.  If we are open to God’s desire to dwell within, between and through us. It means receiving this incredible gift. Accepting it, ingesting it, embodying it. Being it. Growing it.
To be the Body of Christ in the present day means we must welcome, as John tells us in today’s Gospel, the Light of the world, into us. We must be a vessel for that light, letting it fill us-- growing, gaining more power, more luminance, more wattage.   All we need to do is notice the light. Accept it. Receive it. For once we accept The Light, we are giving God the room to do God’s work within us.
Light is a big deal this time of year. As the author O.E. Rolwaag puts it in his classic novel of prairie life, Giants in the Earth: A Saga of the Prairie “[the winter days are] bleak and gloomy, with cold that congeal[s] all life. ” As frontal systems stall along the banks of the Great Lakes, the dark can really get to us. We can go days without seeing the sun. Vitamin D deficiency is a significant medical issue around these parts!
I think all the Christmas lights people put up is a subconscious response to the enveloping darkness of winter. I’m not sure how dark it gets in the Holy Land—I’ll report back after my trip---but my guess is that the dark was a scary thing in the time of Jesus. No electricity, no battery operated lanterns, no flashlight apps on smart-phones…when the sun had set and the clouds obscured the stars and the moon, it must have been pretty darn dark.
So referring to the coming of the Messiah as the coming of the light makes sense, for the light brings security and comfort. In the light of day things generally look more hopeful, we feel more capable, less vulnerable, less alone. Light brings Hope. Security. Comfort.
Simply put, Light feels good. Jesus as the Light of the World, feels good too. So what’s the problem?
Us. You see we have a part to play in God’s presence in the world—in the current Advent---but, we have a tendency to complicate everything. Our part, our mission, if we choose to accept it is to receive the light, welcome it within us, as best we can, and then step back and let God, let the Holy Spirit do the rest.
One commentator puts it like this:
“It is crucial for our salvation that we know what is the work of God, and what is our work… that we don’t get these two things mixed up – expecting God to do what we must do, or, trying to do what God must do.
One key distinction between what is our work, and what is God’s work is that it’s our work to prepare for God’s presence, to be open to God, to trust God, to receive God’s presence, to respond to God’s blessing, and to accept the mission that God gives; but it is God’s work to provide both the seed and the fruitfulness.
Advent is a time for us to prepare the soil. God provides the seed and Jesus Christ--the light of the world—comes to nurture that seed into a hearty, flourishing plant of faith growing and blooming within us.
This mission—spreading the Good News of Christ throughout the world-- may seem like a huge goal, a difficult task, a mission impossible, but we don’t do this alone. We don’t have to worry about the seed or the fruit. We don’t have to worry about how the plant will fare—we don’t even have to worry about the harvest. We just need to prepare the soil---our very selves—to receive the seed and then simply to turn toward the light. For this mission, the mission of being the Body of Christ in the Here and Now is, with God’s help, definitely a Mission Possible. +

Comfort O Comfort Not Soothe O Soothe Advent 2 2011

+I like to be comfortable. After a cold walk with the dogs, I love nothing more than to change into flannel pants and a cozy sweatshirt.
We talk about comfort all the time---when someone seems really self assured and calm we say, “They’re so comfortable in their own skin.” Or when we eat a big old pot roast, or make a nice steaming stew, we say we’re indulging in comfort food.
With the wonderful phrase, “ Comfort, O Comfort my People, the prophet Isaiah is expressing a common refrain---we like to be comfortable…we long to be comfortable.
The Israelites whom Isaiah is addressing have just returned from exile; returning to a land their parents and grandparents had been forced to leave behind. A land the current generation had never lived in. For them, “home” was simply a fantasy, a place where problems never existed, where, if they could just get back, everything would be fine. But the fact is, back home, everything wasn’t ok…they had idealized the thought of “home”, they put a return to Judah on a pedestal.
I know the feeling. I bet you do too. How many of us have said, “everything will be ok, just as soon as I make a little more money, or just as soon as the kids get a bit older, or as soon as my parent’s health problems stabilize, or as soon as my boss gives me a break.”
The Israelites thought, “everything will be ok, once we get home.”
But Isaiah is saying that, while returning home was certainly soothing, it couldn’t provide the comfort they –we all—long for…because:
Only God can do that. There is one and only one source of comfort: God. We can only be comfortable once we allow ourselves to rest in the arms of God, for that is where the essence of comfort resides.
We mistake all sorts of things for comfort. Often, what we think comforting is, actually, soothing.
And soothing is qualitatively different than comforting.
To soothe is to alleviate, placate, relieve.
To comfort is to give strength and hope.
Soothing is temporary. Comfort is forever.
Now, there’s nothing wrong with being soothed---there’s an awful lot of discomfort in our daily lives which is alleviated through soothing….and, even though when the soothing ends the discomfort returns, that little respite  gives us the energy to fight through the annoyances, disappointments and worries of daily life.
But sometimes really bad things happen to us: Death, illness, abuse, heartbreak and hopelessness. Things that make us feel fragile, vulnerable, at risk. When that happens, we don’t need soothing, we need, we crave, we long for, comfort.
When I was first diagnosed with cancer, I found great comfort in people who responded to the news with cursing, laments and tears. I found their reaction very honest and true. What really drove me nuts were those people who said, “oh you’ll be fine.”
I know these people were just trying to soothe me…to give me a little relief…but I didn’t want to be soothed, I didn’t want to be distracted. I couldn’t be distracted. Because-- and those of you who have dealt with deep hurt, fear and heartache know what I mean--when experiencing such gut wrenching, life changing events, nothing distracts you.  You never forget what you’re going through. You can’t. Soothing may distract, but it does not comfort. And comfort is what I longed for. Comfort was what I found when I lamented, when I cried, when I cursed. Because when I fell apart, I realized I was letting go of all my control, I was letting go and I was, to steal a phrase from AA, Letting God.
A United Church of Canada minister, David Ewart says that
“[Isaiah] speaks words of comfort NOT because PEOPLE are resilient, strong, courageous, resourceful, hard-working, dedicated, etc. Indeed, Isaiah reminds us of an inescapable reality – people are like flowers and grass that wither and fade. And so too our resilience, strength, courage, resourcefulness, hard work, dedication, etc. also wither and fade with us. ..[Isaiah maintains that only one thing truly comforts us, because] only one thing never withers or fades – the word of God. ” Isaiah realized that only by letting go of the “what ifs” and the “if onlys,” the “whens” and the “one days,” do we let God’s comfort wrap around us.
God’s comfort is the one thing that doesn’t wither and fade.
 As our life unfolds, things happen: our path gets crooked, our valleys become deeper, the mountains of despair grow ever higher and our spirit suffers. Soothing may take our mind off of the bumpy road, the deep valleys and the treacherous mountains of life, but when the soothing ends—and soothing always ends—we are left with the crooked, the deep and the tall troubles of life. But when we focus on comfort, when we diligently and deliberately seek comfort in our lives, the road is straightened, the valley is raised, the mountains are lowered and our spirit is buoyed.
Perhaps we all need to do a comfort inventory.
Are we ready for Comfort? Really Ready?
Because…
to get to Comfort, we have to go through lament.
to get to Comfort we have to go through the wilderness.
to get to Comfort we have to shed all the things we use to soothe us.
to get to Comfort we need to become vulnerable.
And to be vulnerable we must trust…we must trust that the Great Comforter is waiting for us, hoping for us, anxious for us to let go and to trust
--just as John the Baptist did.
--just as Mary and Joseph did.
And, just like Jesus did.
Because we, to really feel the Comfort of God, must trust all the way to the cross, the tomb and beyond.
Advent is a time to prepare for the coming of the Great Comforter, to ready ourselves for accepting the presence of God in our very lives and into our very beings. It’s a time when we accept that life is not always easy, and that fixes are not always quick. It’s a time when we accept that soothing, while less risky to pursue will, in time, wither and fade. It’s a time when we, each and every one of us, must prepare our vulnerable selves to accept the greatest gift God has to offer: a baby, wrapped in swaddling cloths and lying in a manger. +

Do you see me now? Pentecost Last 2011

Can you hear me now? This phrase was made famous by a cell phone company several years ago; it really took off and is part of our vocabulary.
In today’s Gospel Jesus asks a similar question: Do you see me now? Do you notice me now?
They asked: “Lord, when was it that we saw you sick or in prison and visited you?
When was it that we saw you hungry and gave you food or thirsty and gave you something to drink? “
Jesus responds, “Truly I tell you just as you did it to one of the least of these, who are members of my family, you did it to me.”
Each time you saw them, you saw me.
Each time you noticed them, you noticed me.
Each time you helped them, you loved me.
Lord, when was it that we saw you hungry or thirsty or a stranger or naked or sick or in prison and did not take care of you?
Truly I tell you, just as you did not do it to one of the least of these, you did not do it to me.
You don’t see me now, do you? You don’t notice me here, do you?
What we do unto others, we do unto our Savior.
What we do unto others, we do unto God.
In our Baptismal Covenant we promise to seek and serve Christ in all whom we encounter. Seeking and serving Christ requires looking, seeing and noticing.

Do you see God now? Do you notice Jesus there? Right there…. you know, the guy walking down the street, ranting to himself.
The very unpleasant woman on the other end of the customer service phone
The child you have nurtured who has turned her back on you.
The spouse you loved and cherished who has left you.
The angry, spiteful neighbor….
God is there, Jesus is there. Do you see God in them, do we notice Jesus standing among them?
How we treat others is how we treat God.
On this Christ the King Sunday, the last Sunday of our church year, we look at what has been and what will be—we reflect on the life of Jesus on earth, we remember his death and resurrection as we await his coming again---we’re reminded that we’re graded, we’re evaluated, we’re judged by how much we saw, how often we noticed, God in the other.
Because each and every time we notice another person--really notice them… really look in their eyes, really listen to what they have to say…every time we do that we  make more room for God, through Christ, in this world.
And each and every time we forget, we ignore another person, every time we fail to hear what they say, we are closing ourselves, and the world around us, to God’s never ending effort to break through and into our everything.
The Apocalypse—the end of time---is a time when the barriers between this world and the next will be broken down, when the nations of this world fall away and we unite—all of us---under our one true King, our true Ruler, God as presented to us through Jesus Christ.
And every single time we notice God in another, each time we really see Jesus, seeking and serving him in all whom we encounter, we are bringing that time ever closer.
The apocalypse, contrary to what our readings seem to suggest is not an event. It is a process. The end of time is simply the end of time as we know it and the beginning of time as it has always been.  The Coming of the Day of the Lord. The end of life as we know it and the beginning of life eternal, doesn’t happen in one fell swoop, it happens over time, with each and everyone of us doing our part.
To bring about the unification of this world and the next , to bring about the day of the Lord, the Return of Christ on Earth, we must break open room for The Christ to dwell. We must break away from all that ensnares us. We must free ourselves from all that scares us, we must loosen the grips of doubt and reach out and up ready to receive our King. Our Lord. Our Beloved God.
Each and every time we live our life as God intended, each and every time we mimic Jesus in our actions, we bring that day ever closer.
Our job is not to simply live a decent life, biding our time until we get to heaven. Our job is to break down the distinctions between this world and the next, to break down the barriers which keep us overly concerned with our individual well being instead of our corporate well-being.
As Barbara Brown Taylor puts it: We are called to look at each other and see Christ. It’s as simple, and as hard, as that.” To accomplish this seemingly simple yet still so very difficult task requires Grace.
When we see God in the other, when we notice Jesus in the eyes of that other person, it’s because of Grace. The God-given ability to see beyond ourselves, our own wants needs and fears and look at the bigger picture—that ability is a gift from God, it is a gift of God…and when we receive and open that gift—when we release that grace…it spreads. From me to you and from you to another and on and on and on.
It’s that chain reaction of grace, that domino effect of noticing God in each other, of seeking and serving Christ in all whom we encounter, which allows the in-breaking of God’s Kingdom. The more we break ourselves open to Love, the more the source of that Love, God, is given room to move about here on earth.
Jesus Christ as our King seems like an a odd title for this itinerant preacher who spoke of the sanctity of the poor, the sick, the outcast, the rejected…..But Christ as the King of a world where the Divine is noticed in all, where the Holy is respected by all and where the Love of God is the rule and not the exception—that is a world where Christ, as King, makes sense.
Can you hear me now?
Can you see me now?
Do you notice me now?
Yes God, we do.
Thanks be to God. +

Sometimes Everything Has to Fall Apart Nov 13 2011

+Sometimes there’s pain and suffering before we get to joy.
And sometimes, everything has to fall apart to open up space for the new.
Chaos often precedes order. Things tend to get really messy before the new is established. While most of the time Incremental change works best, other times bringing about change requires something more dramatic, more sweeping, more all-encompassing. And such dramatic change can feel frightening and uncomfortable, it can seem thoughtless, even violent.
Remember our October Storm, the Columbus Day weekend 2006 snowfall that destroyed thousands of trees and left many of us without electricity for over a week? It seemed as if this storm was a disaster and that we’d never recover.
But, speaking from my own experience as a homeowner on Woodward Ave. at the time, the impact has been intense…but a disaster? Not at all.
The hundred year old magnolia tree in our front yard was one of the first to fall that night…but within two years of nature’s violent and seemingly capricious pruning that tree bloomed more fully and brilliantly than it had in a generation.
The trees that weathered the storm are healthier, more vibrant, more full of life. Yes, we lost a lot of old familiar trees, but through nature’s pruning, the new landscape is stronger, richer, fuller.
Sometimes there’s pain and suffering before we get to joy.
Sometimes everything has to fall apart before a new order can be born
Of course we could have, in a measured fashion, pruned the trees, but no one would make the dramatic cuts needed to bring forth such incredible new life. The storm did what we wouldn’t do. Opening ourselves up to the threshing of the old in order to make room for the new, is something most of us won’t do without kicking and screaming. After all, the old, even if it’s weakening, even if it’s stagnant, even if it no longer works very well, is still more familiar, more comfortable than opening up to the unknown unfamiliar new thing.

Sometimes there is pain and suffering before we get to joy.
Sometimes everything has to fall apart before the new can be born.
None of us likes today’s readings—a violent God banishing people to eternal damnation, a God of vengeance, a God of judgment. A God who is willing to rip apart the old in an effort to usher in the new.
In Zephaniah, the prophet is sharing a particularly vivid description of the Day of the Lord—the apocalypse.
Zephaniah was writing to the people of Judah soon after their last great king had died—Josiah. Their future uncertain, the glory days seemingly past; he was writing to people who were  looking backward, toward what was, and slowly realizing what will not be again. On the one hand the old order was destroyed. On the other, a new order was being formed, something incredible. The people had a choice—look back or move forward. What Zephaniah in our first lesson, Paul in our second and Jesus in our third tell us is this :
Sometimes everything has to fall apart before the new order can be born.
The Jews of the early first century, CE believed that the coming of messiah would be preceded by a lot of pain and suffering, a time when the good would be separated from the evil---when the worthy would be taken up into the arms of the holy leaving the rest behind to sure and certain destruction.
Jesus doesn’t shy away from this imagery…he just turns it around a little bit.
Well a lot bit.
You see Jesus did come to separate the sheep and the goats and the wheat and the chaff. But not to condemn one to eternal damnation and the other to paradise. Jesus’ separation is between those who “get it” and those who don’t followed by  a clear and precise road map for those who wish to move from the “I don’t get it,” to the “I do.”
The Parable of the Talents—our Gospel reading today-- provides just such a map.  The story tells us about money—a lot of money—and how each slave manages his masters’ fortune. But, of course, the meaning of the parable has nothing to do with money, and everything to do with riches. You see the bottom line to Jesus’ message here is—live life, take what you have been given and do good---don’t live in fear of what might happen, live in hope of what will happen. For life happens, stuff happens, some good and some bad, some thrilling and some terrifying but, if we live our life embracing all of our unique, varied and “especially for us” talents, if we use them to further the march of creation, then we’ll be ready for whatever comes next.
Think about it. If I had run out the evening of the October storm and shaken the snow off of the leaves the magnolia tree wouldn’t have snapped.
And it wouldn’t have grown back with such a vengeance. It wouldn’t be so healthy. If I had played it safe, the tree would have survived, endured, existed.
But I would have denied it the opportunity to regroup, to shed some of its old and tired bark, and embark on growing anew. Of being born again.
Jesus came to earth as an October storm: he came to shake up the old order and bring in a new. He, as he stretched out the loving arms of his holy embrace on the hard wood of the cross, loaded all the destruction, all the vengeance and violence, all the crying and gnashing of teeth upon his beaten body and, with the wail which tears through us all on Good Friday, caused everything to fall apart, once and for all, so that, on that first Easter morning, he could walk out of that tomb presenting us with something all together new.
A God of vengeance and violence is part of our biblical heritage…but it is only part of the story…the full story—the rest of the story-- includes a young man from Galilee who took all of the violence, all of the vengeance we can muster and defeated it. For every one. Forever. The itinerant preacher from Nazareth takes our fear, our doubt, our love of order and hatred for uncertainty and rips it to shreds, leaving us with the space to allow something all together new to germinate. Leaving us open to being Born anew. Again and again and again.
Sometimes there is pain and suffering before we get to joy.
Sometimes everything has to fall apart before the new can be Born.
And sometimes we need to let the snow fall, the branches crack and the old fade away. For you never know what will grow in its place. +

All Saints Sunday Nov. 6 2011

In our church calendar, this past week could easily be labeled: the week of death. Besides Holy Week, no week in the church year is more death-loaded than this one. But, because we are a Resurrection people, death isn’t the end and a week of death focus is not morbid.
I’ll always remember the moment my father died. After 9 months of fight, he just couldn’t battle lung cancer anymore. We knew that it was The Day, for he had requested the morphine drip and the doctors said, once the morphine began he would fall into a coma and then slip away. Having never seen anyone in a coma before, I was shocked to discover that it’s not a passive state. Periodically he would moan, move around and, scariest of all, open his eyes… but behind those eyes, there was barely a hint of Dad….On the one hand, there he was. But, on the other hand, there he wasn’t.
Finally around 4 in the afternoon, he died. It was then that the creeping vacancy I’d noticed earlier was complete. Just moments after his death there was no semblance of “Dad” left.  One moment I looked upon my father and the next, an empty shell—just an abandoned container of failing muscles and skin…Dad wasn’t there, he was GONE.
Dad’s soul had taken flight, his earthly fight complete. As we read in the Book of Revelation:
“He will wipe away every tear from their eyes; and there will no
longer be any death;
there will no longer be any mourning, or crying, or pain;
 the first things have passed away."
Dad’s first life, the temporal one was over, his second, life eternal continued… he was off to take his place with the saints.

I have shared these remembrances of Dad’s death with many of you before, and I’m sure I will again…for his death, the experience I had of it---has formed me and my theology of death, my theology of the saints, for the almost two decades since it occurred.
For at that moment I realized---not intellectually, not even religiously, but spiritually and temporally, in my soul and in my bones---I realized that who we are is far beyond what we see, or what we hear, or what we smell or what we touch. We are what’s inside—our soul—and that soul is encased in our bodies at birth and removed from our bodies at death. Our bodies are containers, they’re not us.
Ok, so this is a basic Christian belief and one you probably all thought I should have learned LONG ago—but knowing something and knowing something are vastly different.
On April 18, 1993 I learned that lesson.
A lesson which is at the crux of our theology of the saints.
Death is a fact of life-- it’s a universal experience. …and it fascinates, terrifies and befuddles most of us.
We spend a lot of time and energy trying to figure out just what the after-life is all about---it’s one of the reasons the book Heaven is Real is so popular---we want proof, we like proof--because even though we proclaim it, we don’t really know it—we can’t really know if Heaven is Real.  We just have to believe it. That’s what faith is all about.
And that makes an awful lot of us uncomfortable.
This past week was our officially sponsored Church search for an  understanding of life, death and the after-life—the Tridduum of All Saints—All Hallow’s Eve, All Saints Day and All Soul’s Day.
These three days give us three distinct glimpses into life eternal. Of life after death:
Halloween-- derived from an ancient Celtic observance of a time when the veil between this world and the next is thinned---lifted even---giving us a glimpse of the other side. This practice allowed the living to help the dead complete their journey from this life to the next—by protecting them from evil spirits so they could safely arrive into the embrace of the Holy.
All Saints Day--- a day to relish in the glory of the Saints, thanking them for what they’ve given us.  It is so important to our faith we celebrate it twice—on the actual day, November 1 and on the first Sunday after Nov 1—today. I wear my gold, we pull out as many stops as we can—for we want the saints to know, we appreciate them, we love them, we rely on them.
The third and final day is All Souls—the Commemoration of all the Faithful Departed---a day focused on all who have died in the past year. A day we allow ourselves to remember those who have died. To miss them, to long for them.
The All Saints trifecta helps us to honor that Great Cloud of Witnesses, the great cloud of souls who have left us in one way, yet return to us in another.
Our uniquely Anglican theology says that this Great Cloud of Witnesses—the saints of God---is made up of all sorts and manner of people:
Saints of the Church Universal----Mary, Joseph, Peter, Paul
Saints of the Church specific---Elam Jewett, Darwin Martin, the Northrups, Ruth Noller, The Barry’s, John Mears, Fred Tripi
And Saints of our own families---my dad, my grandparents…
People who no longer physically walk among us, but who nonetheless inspire us, encourage us, berate us, and nudge us.
IS Heaven Real? Are the saints really surrounding us, right now?
Well let’s get real quiet. Listen….Listen intently.
Do you hear them? Can you feel them?…they’re right here…our parents, our grandparents, our sons and daughters, our friends and neighbors our patriarchs and matriarchs, the saints of the church universal, the saints of this parish specific, the saints of our towns, our families….
The saints of God, that Great Cloud of Souls are witnesses—witnesses to our lives, witnesses to our hopes, our dreams, our longings. Partners in our searching, helpers in our times of need. They are the Holy Spirit’s foot soldiers here on earth. Right now, we’re surrounded, surrounded by this great cloud of souls: Folks who long for us, miss us and pray for us. Just as we do them.
So Happy Death Week, Happy Eternal Life Week, Happy Day of All Saints--may we continue to be encouraged and sustained by that great cloud of souls---folks like you and me who have done and continue to do extraordinary things for us, Saints to Be. Amen.

Love isn't just a noun. It's a verb October 22 2011

+Growing up, my family didn’t say “I love you.” It wasn’t that my family was cold... I knew I was loved…but we were the poster-child for WASPs—White Anglo Saxon Protestants.  In our Irish family, talking was very popular, but talking about feelings? Not so much. Our family, more than anything, avoided being vulnerable…and talking about love made my family of origin far too vulnerable for our WASP sensibilities.

But love is a whole lot more complicated than just saying it. In Greek there are a number of words to describe the various and sundry things our English word LOVE describes. Love, as expressed by Jesus, is “agape” literally translated as: a Feast of Love.  Perhaps instead of calling our service “Holy Eucharist” we should call it a Love Feast, for that is exactly what we’re doing, we’re Feasting on Love. Once fed in this manner we are strengthened to go out into the world, seeking and serving Christ in all others.

It’s good we’re strengthened, for when we commit to living out the message of Christ in the world—being his hands and feet, his eyes and ears, and his mouth—we are making a significant, difficult and lifetime commitment. A promise to live according to the Greatest Commandment, the greatest two, actually, upon which hangs everything else: Loving God with all our might and loving our neighbors just as God loves us.

In the Jewish tradition there are roughly 613 commandments, (go ahead and count they are listed in Deuteronomy and Leviticus) and it was out of those 613 the Pharisee in today’s Gospel asked the question: which of these is the greatest?

Now of course, this was a trick. For by asking Jesus to name the greatest, they are backing him into a corner of blasphemy—for to place any of those commandments above another was to violate the very law the commandments outlined. However, Jesus, in his way, outsmarted them, for he didn’t “diss” the other laws, he just said that the rest of them flow out of the two he mentions. In shorthand Jesus is saying Love God because by loving God—by actually trying to give God back a modicum of what God gives us--- we will be filled with such an abundance of Love that loving our neighbor—loving everyone, no exceptions—will come more naturally.

         In other words, You gotta give it. You’ve gotta do it. Love isn’t just a noun. It’s also a verb. As one commentator notes:

Biblical love is not passive and it is not strictly emotional. In the Old Testament, there are references to many kinds of love, but the love referred to here by Jesus is… far from passive. It is the active response of the faithful person to the love of God...To love God with all one's heart, and soul, and mind, is to choose to respond to [God’s love]. Feelings and emotions do not enter into the equation.[1]

My parents would love this quote---especially the part about feelings and emotions------but of course, we aren’t talking about the love we have for our parents, our children, our spouses or partners. We’re talking about God’s love for us and our love for God. The love from which all other love flows. What today’s Gospel commands us to do is to allow the Love we experience when we are fed at this table to nourish us in the ways of Agape---in the ways of a Love Feast. And, when we’re nourished at this feast, we can’t help ourselves, we must share this love with others, by acting out of Love, in Love and through Love. Clayton Schmit, a seminary professor puts it this way:

This means that, to those with whom we are intimate, to those we do not know, to those who may be dirty or repugnant, and even to those who harm us, we can act according to the law of love. We can be merciful and gracious. To love the neighbor as ourselves is to make a conscious choice and act upon it.  …

When we love God's people, we are always, and at the same time loving God.[2]

You see, as UCC minister Kate Huey says:

[The] primary component of biblical love is not affection but commitment. Warm feelings of gratitude may fill our consciousness as we consider all that God has done for us, but it is not warm feelings that [the Greatest Commandment] demands of us but rather stubborn, unwavering commitment" [3]

Commitment means giving of ourselves, it means giving this place (GS, ASC) your time, your talent and your treasure. It means increasing your pledge or pledging for the first time---not because I ask you to, or our stewardship speakers ask you too, but because your love for God is so great you feel compelled to return that love to God…..

And, we return that Love by taking what we’ve been given—for all things come from God------and give it back.

Now, some of you may be thinking, all I have to give God is heartache, bills, poor health, and unhappiness. You know what? That’s OK, give it to God. Let God have it. If you don’t feel you have any bounty at all, if you feel as if God hasn’t given you anything good, then give all the bad back to God. For God can take it. God will take it. God wants to take it. You see, that’s what this Agape, this God Love is all about-----God loves us so much that God wants all of us---our heart, our mind, our soul, our anger, our fear, our sadness….and our abundance, our joy and our bounty. God wants it all.

We fail to live into the Love commandments when we stop giving it all to God. As long as we hold onto what we have—good bad and ugly--- as long as we refuse to give any of it up--- God is left out of our lives. And God, above all else wants to be part of our lives. That’s why God took on skin and bone, heartache and pain in the person of Jesus---because God wants the whole of the human experience.

Maybe that’s the best way to understand this God Love, this Agape----God so loves us, God even wants us on our worst days.

Love isn’t just a noun, it’s also a verb.

Biblical Love isn’t just a feeling….it’s an action. Love isn’t a sentiment as much as it is a commitment. Feeling Love is one thing, doing Love is something altogether different.

---

[1] Clayton Schmit Arthur DeKruyter/Christ Church Oak Brook Associate Professor of Preaching Fuller Theological Seminary Pasadena, CA www.workingpreacher.com accessed 10.21.11

[2] ibid

[3]Kathryn Matthews Huey, http://www.ucc.org/worship/samuel/october-23-2011.html